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November 11, 2010

[Again the Sri Lankan government denied the military carried out the executions, however, after detailed examination, professor Philip Alston, the UN’s former special rapporteur to Sri Lanka, said he believes the video is genuine. Since the end of the war in May last year, no one from the military has been charged with any offence and no evidence has emerged from the government inquiries. Critics say the Sri Lankan government is writing its own history.]

By Agencies

Media has obtained photographs that appear to
show Sri Lankan army soldiers abusing Tamil civilians in the final days of the
Sri Lankan civil war.

The pictures show various graphic scenes,
with dead bodies blindfolded and hands bound, shot through the head and mounds
of bodies on the back of a farmer's trailer.

It is claimed that the photos were taken in
the closing months of the country’s long-running conflict that ended 18 months
ago.

One of the photos shows a line of bodies,
including what is believed to be the body of the son of Velupillai Prabhakaran,
the leader of the rebel group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil
Tigers, that was defeated in the civil war.

Another photo shows the naked body of a young
woman and the body of a boy, perhaps in his early teens.

Authenticity unverified

It is not possible to verify the authenticity
of the images that were obtained by media from Tamil contacts who said the
photos were handed over by someone from the Sri Lankan military. It is unclear
why it has taken so long from them to surface.

The photos come to light as Gamini Lakshman
Peiris, the Sri Lankan minister of external affairs, is in London to deliver as
speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Ethnic Tamil groups
have vowed to protest outside the venue.

The Sri Lankan government has always denied
allegations of war crimes and promised to take action if it finds evidence of
atrocities.

Rajiva Wijesinha, a Sri Lankan MP who is also
a former secretary of the country's human rights ministry, told Al Jazeera that
the country has launched an "independent" inquiry into the photos of
the alleged massacre.

"We have always said that any allegation
will be investigated. We believe that our inquiry going on is perfectly
independent."

But Dr. Sam Pari, a spokeswoman for the
Australian Tamil Congress, says there has to foreign pressure on the Sri Lankan
government to allow an international independent investigation into the
atrocity.

"The responsibility of pressuring Sri
Lanka to allow an international independent investigation falls upon the
international governments that currently deal with Sri Lanka in the form of
trade, tourism etc," she told Al Jazeera in an interview.

"So if these governments start placing
trade sanctions and travel bans on Sri Lanka, then Sri Lanka will be forced to
allow an international investigation into war crimes."

In May, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan
president, said that his government will not punish the Sri Lankan army for
"defeating terrorism".

"[…] If the international community
wants to punish Sri Lanka for defeating terrorism, I'm not for that,"
Rajapaksa said.

Sri Lanka has repeatedly rejected
international calls for an independent inquiry into the war against the Tamil
Tigers, in which the UN estimates at least 7,000 Tamil civilians were killed.

Other estimates suggest the figure could be
as high as 20,000 and the inference is that many were killed by government
shelling.

'Whitewash'

Sri Lanka has instead set up its own inquiry
called the "Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission" (LLRC),
which critics say is a whitewash.

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International have refused to participate in the inquiry, stating that it does
not meet international standards for independent and impartial inquiries.

The human rights organisations say that the
new photographic evidence warrants an independent investigation.

Some of the scenery in the photos is similar
to that in video material leaked to the international media which seems to show
the execution of Tamil Tiger fighters by Sri Lankan soldiers.

Again the Sri Lankan government denied the
military carried out the executions, however, after detailed examination,
professor Philip Alston, the UN’s former special rapporteur to Sri Lanka, said
he believes the video is genuine.

Since the end of the war in May last year, no
one from the military has been charged with any offence and no evidence has
emerged from the government inquiries. Critics say the Sri Lankan government is
writing its own history.

For more than 25 years, the Tamil Tigers
waged a secessionist campaign in Sri Lanka that led to it being designated a
terrorist organisation by 32 countries.

At one stage in the conflict 300,000
displaced Tamil civilians languished in makeshift camps.

COLOMBO FLOODED, WATER ENTERS PARLIAMENT[The red-carpeted main chamber itself was dry, but the assembly’s lower floor was under more than a metre of water, mirroring other areas of the capital where thousands of homes were inundated.]

Agence France Presse

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka sent in troops to rescue thousands of residents marooned in the capital Colombo Thursday after the heaviest rains in 18 years flooded the city and the national parliament.

Speaker Chamal Rajapakse was forced to take a boat to inspect the national assembly located on an island in a man-made lake, which is usually reached by a causeway. MPs were later ferried to it in military amphibious fighting vehicles for a brief five-minute session, held in darkness, during which they passed six pieces of legislation under bipartisan agreement.

The red-carpeted main chamber itself was dry, but the assembly’s lower floor was under more than a metre of water, mirroring other areas of the capital where thousands of homes were inundated.

Irrigation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said the flooding was caused by the loss of marshes in Colombo which had previously acted as a sponge to soak up water during downpours. Most of them have been drained for housing development.

“There is message in this disaster,” de Silva told reporters outside the flooded parliament. “We need to take more care of our environment and pay more attention to protecting our eco-systems.”

Overnight rains dumped 44.5 centimetres of rain on the city, the biggest deluge since June 1992, when 49.7 centimetres fell in a day.

“We are deploying troops to rescue people who have been marooned as well as to clear dozens of cars struck in flooded roads,” said Colonel Dampath Ratnayake who was coordinating relief at the Colombo Operations Command.

“The storm water system is unable to cope with the volume of water and we are also sending troops to help municipal workers clear some of the blocked drains,” he said.

Navy boats and airforce helicopters were deployed to help stranded residents and police said that thousands of houses had been submerged due to the inundation in the city. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Telephones and Internet connections were also cut off because of lightning damage to telecommunication towers, while the authorities shut most public schools and cancelled a national examination.

Many banks shut down their automatic teller machines as their computer networks were affected by the lightning. Most landline telephone connections were out, and fallen trees brought down power lines.